Great Throughts Treasury

This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.

Related Quotes

Margaret Bourke-White

Only by his action can a man make (himself/his life) whole... You are responsible for what you have done and the people whom you have influenced. In the end it is only the work that counts.

Action | Character | Life | Life | Man | People | Work |

R. D. Blackmore, fully Richard Doddridge Blackmore

An ounce of practice is worth a pound of precept.

Character | Practice | Precept | Worth |

Black Hawk, born Ma-ka-tai-me-she-kia-kiak NULL

My reason teaches me that land cannot be sold. The Great Spirit gave it to his children to live upon and cultivate as far as necessary for their subsistence, and so long as they occupy and cultivate it they have the right to the soil, but if they voluntarily leave it then any other people have a right to settle on it. Nothing can be sold, except things that can be carried away.

Character | Children | Land | Nothing | People | Reason | Right | Spirit | Wisdom |

Hugh Blair

The fatal fondness of indulging in a spirit of ridicule, and the injurious and irreparable consequences which sometimes attend the too severe reply, can never be condemned with more asperity than it deserves. Not to offend is the first step towards pleasing. To give pain is as much an offence against humanity as against good-breeding, and surely it is as well to abstain from an action because it is sinful, as because it is unpolite.

Action | Character | Consequences | Good | Humanity | Pain | Ridicule | Spirit |

Christian Nestell Bovee

Example has more followers than reason. We unconsciously imitate what pleases us, and approximate to the characters we most admire. A generous habit of thought and action carries with it an incalculable influence.

Action | Character | Example | Habit | Influence | Reason | Thought | Thought |

Brahma-Vaivarta Purana NULL

Piety and selfless deeds elevate the inhabitants of this earth to exalted spiritual estates... self-serving acts reduce them to the realms beneath, of sorrow and pain, rebirths among birds and vermin, or out of the wombs of pigs and beasts of the wild, or among trees. Action is a function of character, which in turn is controlled by custom. This is the whole substance of the secret. This knowledge is the ferry across the ocean of hell to beatitude. For all the animate and inanimate objects in this world... are transitory, like dream. The gods on high, the mute trees and stones, are but apparitions in the fantasy. Good and evil attaching to a person are perishable as bubbles. In the cycles of time they alternate. The wise are attached to neither.

Action | Character | Custom | Deeds | Earth | Evil | Good | Hell | Knowledge | Pain | Piety | Self | Sorrow | Time | Wise | World | Deeds |

William Blake

The voice of the Devil. All Bibles or sacred codes have been the causes of the following errors: 1. That man has two real existing principles; vis; a body and a soul. 2. That energy, called evil, is alone from body, and that reason, called good, is alone from the soul. 3. That God will torment man in eternity for the following energies. But the following contraries to these are true: 1. Man has no body distinct from his soul; for that called body is a portion of soul discerned by the five senses, the chief inlets of the soul in this age. 2. Energy is the only life, and is from the body; and reason is bound or outward circumference of energy. 3. Energy is eternal delight.

Age | Body | Character | Devil | Energy | Eternal | Eternity | Evil | God | Good | Life | Life | Man | Principles | Reason | Sacred | Soul | Will | Following | God |

Alice Cary

True worth is in being, not seeming.

Character | Worth |

William Ellery Channing

The only freedom worth possessing is that which gives enlargement to a people’s energy, intellect and virtues.

Character | Energy | Freedom | People | Worth | Intellect |

Susan Fenimore Cooper, fully Susan Augusta Fenimore Cooper

A true history of human events would show that a far larger proportion of our acts are the results of sudden impulses and accidents than of that reason of which we so much boast.

Character | Events | History | Reason | Wisdom |

J. J. de Chenier

What is virtue? Reason in practice.

Character | Practice | Reason | Virtue | Virtue |

Jeremy Collier

What can be more honorable than to have courage enough to execute the commands of reason and conscience, to maintain the dignity of our nature, and the station assigned us?

Character | Conscience | Courage | Dignity | Enough | Nature | Reason |

James Fenimore Cooper

A true history of human events would show a far larger proportion of our acts are the results of sudden impulses and accident, than of that reason of which we so much boast.

Accident | Character | Events | History | Reason |

Jeremy Collier

There are few things reason can discover with so much certainty and ease as its own insufficiency.

Character | Reason | Wisdom |

William Ellery Channing

I see nothing worth living for but the divine virtue which endures and surrenders all things for truth, duty, and mankind.

Character | Duty | Mankind | Nothing | Truth | Virtue | Virtue | Worth |

Miguel de Cervantes, fully Miguel de Cervantes Saaversa

Three things too much and three too little are pernicious to man: to speak much and know little; to spend much and have little; to presume much and be worth little.

Character | Little | Man | Worth |

William Congreve

Thought precedes the will to think, and error lives ere reason can be born. Reason, the power to guess at right and wrong, the twinkling lamp of wand'ring life, that winks and wakes by turns fooling the follower 'twixt shade and shining.

Character | Error | Power | Reason | Right | Thought | Will | Wisdom |

William Ellery Channing

The only freedom worth possessing is that which gives enlargement to a people's energy, intellect and virtues... Progress, the growth of intelligence and power, is the end and boon of liberty; and, without this, a people may have the name, but want the substance and spirit of freedom.

Character | Energy | Freedom | Growth | Intelligence | Liberty | People | Power | Progress | Spirit | Worth | Intellect |

Edwin Hubbell Chapin

Consider and act with reference to the true ends of existence. This world is but the vestibule of an immortal life. Every action of our lives touches on some chord that will vibrate in eternity.

Action | Character | Ends | Eternity | Existence | Life | Life | Will | World |